The Patriot Witch

by C. C. Finlay

  Only Proctor hadn't written any. His father was beyond the reach of correspondence, and his mother—had she forgiven Proctor yet, for wanting to learn more about his talent, for turning to someone else besides her for that information? He tried to imagine his mother at a place like The Farm and couldn't do it. A secret shared with anyone outside the family would no longer be a secret to her.

  While the messenger waited, Proctor penned a short note to his mother, telling her that he was serving the patriot cause and doing well. He could be reached through the Reverend Emerson. Don't worry about him. He couldn't say more than that without lying or betraying The Farm's secrets, and he couldn't bring himself to do either.

  He almost left with the messenger, but Elizabeth had come to him and promised to teach him more about scrying and his talent as soon as she had recovered from her burns. Still, despite Emerson's encouragement and Elizabeth's promises, Proctor wondered about his father's health, and whether his mother could forgive him, and if Arthur knew not to plant corn at the lower end of the field because rain settled there and it tended to rot. If his lessons in magic did not start soon, Proctor would leave The Farm. He did not fit in here, even though all the others were witches like himself.

  In truth, it was the most unsettlingly diverse group of people Proctor had ever known. Elizabeth's whole life was witchcraft and the Quaker Highway. She scarcely knew anyone in the community beyond The Farm, though she knew other witches in all the colonies and across the frontier. Her talent was healing, and though her left arm had been badly burned, with her hand hooked back on itself so that it would never be useful again, she had prevented any infection. Her other burns were improving better than Proctor could have ever imagined.

  The only woman older than Elizabeth was German-speaking Magdalena Stolzfus, a dour powwow woman from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who dressed so plainly—no buttons on her clothes, only simple hooks—she made Quakers look ostentatious. Despite belonging to some small religious group that rejected contact with the outside world, she had made several trips to The Farm over the years to improve her skills at healing. Alexandra Walker whispered a rumor to Proctor that Magdalena had breathed life back into a stillborn baby; the creature that survived had no soul, and a few years later she had to smother it. She had come to The Farm because of the murder.

  Proctor never knew when to believe Alexandra, who was just fourteen, loose-limbed and quick to laugh or climb a tree. She liked rumors and anything the least bit scandalous, and had been sent to The Farm from the mountains of western Virginia because she used her talents to cause mischief. She complained to Proctor that she was there not to learn how to do things, but to learn how not to do them. The other women, especially Cecily, tried to keep her on a short leash.

  Cecily Sumpter Pinckney would have had them all on leashes if she had her way. She reminded Proctor of Emily in some ways—petite, beautiful, sure of her place in the world. But Cecily was more than that; she was the kind of lady who dressed daily in the type of finery that Proctor had only seen once before on the governor's wife. She wore emerald rings, and an ivory cameo pendant, even when she attended to her chores, though Proctor came to realize that while Cecily talked about her share of The Farm's work as though she did it, all her time was spent attending to Elizabeth. The real labor was done by Lydia.

  Lydia was Cecily's slave. According to Alexandra, Lydia had been Cecily's nanny on her childhood plantation in South Carolina. The two of them discovered their talents together. The other residents on The Farm tried to treat Lydia like an equal, but she steadfastly kept her head down and served Cecily without complaint, doing the chores assigned to both of them, often leaving her too exhausted to learn anything from their lessons.

  The lessons were taught by Deborah, at least while Elizabeth recovered from her burns. Deborah still disliked Proctor for the widow's escape, and she arranged the lessons so he missed them. She had been on The Farm the longest, had been trained as Elizabeth's assistant. She knew so much about binding spells and other nonhealing magic that it sometimes made the others anxious, especially Jedediah.

  Jedediah lacked any talent for witchcraft, but he worked as a trailblazer for the Quaker Highway and kept The Farm running. The latter was easier now that he had Proctor's help, as he did on this day, when they were cutting up dead trees to restock their firewood supply.

  By the time they were finished, Proctor was shoulder-sore, with the calluses raw on his hands and a powerful appetite growing inside him. He returned to the house, grateful to see that the trestle table had been set up in the yard and laden with food. Someone had taken time to decorate it with bright arrangements of cut flowers.

  Deborah came out of the house with a bowl of buttered greens and placed them among the flowers.

  “Are you sure that's going to be enough?” Proctor asked, trying to make friendly conversation with her.

  “Who knows? We have to cook more since you came. You eat twice as much as anyone else.”

  She stalked off immediately. Proctor put his hands to his mouth and called after her. “Maybe that's 'cause I do twice as much of the work.”

  Alexandra, standing nearby, overheard him. Swinging her arms randomly from side to side she said, “She's a bit full of herself sometimes, ain't she?”

  He shrugged, to say yes without saying yes.

  Her eyes sparked. “Watch this. She won't feel so proud in a minute.”

  Hands behind her back, she strolled over to the house. As Deborah banged out the door with another plate, Alexandra whistled a series of notes and spun her finger in the air.

  The bottom of Deborah's skirt rippled as if there were a sudden breeze. She stopped without turning around. Then a dust devil spun on the ground from her feet back to Alexandra, and—with a sound like the wind catching a sail—her skirt blew up, lifting the hem to the top of her head.

  Proctor scratched his nose and averted his eyes from her spindly young-girl legs. It was one thing to see a lady's undergarments drying on a clothesline and another thing entirely to see her wearing them.

  Deborah calmly walked over and set her plate down on the table while Alexandra screeched and tried unsuccessfully to shove her skirt back into place. Elizabeth came to the door, her left arm in its sling, with Cecily beside her. Lydia and Magdalena stopped their work around the table and watched closely.

  With a single word from Deborah, the skirts dropped back into place. Alexandra's face was flushed with anger, her nostrils flaring as she tried to control herself. She started to walk away, and Deborah held out her hand.

  “Today's lesson is the simple reversal spell,” she said. “Pay close attention.”

  Proctor took a few steps closer.

  “We'll begin by explaining to everyone exactly what you were trying to do,” Deborah said.

  “You know exactly what I was doing,” Alexandra growled.

  “You conjured up a wind spell. Fairly impressive, actually. You must have had a good teacher for weather spells. But what was your intent?”

  Alexandra kept her lips tight, staring defiantly.

  “Your intent was malicious,” Deborah said. “To humiliate me.”

  “I don't think that's possible—you don't have any shame,” Alexandra said.

  “Be that as it may, I felt your spell and turned it with a simple incantation to give an eye for an eye, with a prayer to spare my own.” She turned her head toward Proctor, saying, “We often use Bible verses for our spells, to acknowledge that it is God who gives us our talent.”

  It was the first useful thing she'd said to Proctor. Instantly, he saw the sense in it. “And using the Bible deflects charges of satanic worship as well.”

  “Those who fear us are quick to say that even the devil can quote scripture,” Deborah corrected. Turning back to Alexandra, she said, “It's our intentions that matter. If you had intended me no harm, no harm would have come back to you.”

  Magdalena shook her head vehemently. “This is not right. Ve must t
he other cheek turn.”

  Elizabeth raised her good hand in a gesture of peace. “Deborah, I am not content to see us harm, or wish harm, even to reputation, on one another, neither in jest nor in turnabout.”

  “This is not in jest,” Deborah said, never breaking her gaze from Alexandra. “I favor violence no more than either of you. But we have recently been attacked by a witch who wanted to kill us. If Alexandra knows how to do this spell, it could save her life.”

  The color drained from Alexandra's face, and she took a step back. “Will it work against any kind of harm?”

  “No,” Deborah said. “Only against harm coming from a magical source. An ordinary torch would still burn you.”

  “What … what did you use as a focus?”

  “You used a spell for wind, so when I felt the wind, I held it in my head, and sent it back to you.”

  “Is that why I couldn't make it stop?”

  “Not so long as I held the thought.”

  “I can't do that,” Alexandra said, pale now. She held up an empty hand, then made the spinning gesture with her finger. “I need something more tangible than a thought.”

  “Practice,” Deborah told her. “I am sure you can learn to do it.”

  Proctor held back a whistle of appreciation. Bet that would take some kind of practice. If Deborah could recognize a spell and create a counterspell simply by holding a thought in her head, then she was a natural talent. Deep down, he already knew as much. He had seen examples of the widow's power, and yet Deborah had been able to trap her with a binding spell that only his ignorant intervention undid. How powerful was Deborah really?

  He imitated Alexandra's whirling gesture, knowing he would be happy to learn that much.

  Jedediah came up and stood beside him. “Might be a bit chilly around the table, come time to eat,” he said. “Reckon we could say we had work to do and take our plates to someplace warmer, like the barn.”

  Proctor shook his head no. This was the first useful thing he'd learned since coming to The Farm. A focus and a Bible verse, just like the eggs and the prayer his mother taught him for scrying. All her rituals were to help her focus. All her prayers were to hold her good intentions.

  “Art thou sure?” Jedediah said. “Have thou ever seen a pack of barn cats around one saucer of milk, all that hissing and clawing?”

  “I came here to learn about magic,” Proctor answered. “If I have to put up with a little caterwauling now and then to learn it, I'll take my chances.”

  Jedediah shrugged. “It's on thy head.”

  Despite Jedediah's prediction, there was no caterwauling over dinner. All the conversation concerned the widow; what were her motives, whom did she serve, how could her magics be defeated.

  “I have been neglectful of our safety too long,” Elizabeth said as they cleaned up the empty plates. “The enchantment that conceals this place is not sufficient protection. The widow was able to find her way past it. Deborah made a good point this afternoon that we must be prepared. We should establish a spell that will act as a barrier against unwelcome magics.” Looking to Magdalena, she said, “Then we will have no need to reverse them.”

  The old Pennsylvania Dutch woman frowned. Frowning seemed to be her principal mode of expression, but this was clearly a frown of approval.

  Elizabeth gathered items from the house and then collected the women around her. Proctor joined them. “I'd like to help too, any way I can,” he said.

  Elizabeth smiled at him. “This is very advanced magic, a bit too complicated for where thou art now. But I promise I will show thee some of the basic spells tomorrow.”

  He clenched his fists, ready to demand a chance to participate, but Elizabeth saw his expression.

  “Really, this is women's work,” she said. “Thou can do women's work if thou want to, but I'll be happy to teach spells more suited for thee. First thing in the morning. That'll be all right, won't it?”

  “I guess,” he said, and immediately regretted it.

  “Lydia?” Cecily said from her spot at Elizabeth's side. She looked away from her slave as she spoke, brushing dust from the lace trim on her sleeves.

  “Yes, ma'am?” Lydia answered.

  “We don't want to trouble your head with all these complicated things. Would you mind seeing to the weeding?”

  Lydia's dark face remained impassive. “As you wish, ma'am.”

  She peeled away to go over to the vegetable garden beside the house. Proctor looked at Elizabeth and said, “Tomorrow?”

  “First thing in the morning,” she said.

  He didn't believe a word of it, but he was too polite to say so. Maybe there were other ways to learn what he wanted to know. “I'll go help Lydia then.”

  He watched over his shoulder as he walked to the garden beside the house. The five women joined hands—Cecily rested her delicate fingers on Elizabeth's crippled arm—and began with a prayer. In their own way, they were just as secretive and fearful as his mother. Hiding The Farm with an enchantment, leaving their families to go someplace safe, reluctant to share what they knew with him.

  Meanwhile his own farm was being neglected, putting his plans for the cattle a year behind. And Emily was God knew where, probably worried sick about him. She had left him sick and injured in an empty house. He needed to send word to her soon, to let her know he had recovered and things would be all right between them.

  The weeds in the garden were thick-stalked and hearty while the vegetables struggled beside them like sickly younger siblings. Lydia hacked at the roots with her hoe, pausing every few steps to pull them out.

  “I'll hoe, if you pull,” Proctor said.

  She regarded him for a moment, then handed the tool to him. She knelt in the dirt, which blended into the brown check of her coarse cotton dress.

  “I thought you had the talent,” he said.

  She pulled up another handful of weeds and tossed the whole bunch aside. “I might've said the same about you.”

  “We're all equal here, all free.”

  “That's what they tell me.”

  Proctor replied with a friendly laugh. “I still don't even know how magic works. I mean, you know enough you could probably teach me.”

  “I don't know about that,” she said.

  In some ways, it was like prying information from his mother. He had to remember to be patient. He hoed steadily, letting her gather the weeds. Finally, she lifted her head to make sure no one else was around.

  “Magic is like water,” she said. “It's everywhere in the world—in the air, like the rain, and in the ground, like water in a deep well. Magic flows in deep rivers.”

  That was an interesting way of seeing it. “How'd it flow into me?” Proctor asked.

  “Water, it always flows downhill. Magic is the same. Magic always flows downhill to someplace, or someone, that can hold it.”

  Proctor stopped hoeing for a moment, to puzzle that out, but she quirked her mouth at him so he started again. “I know how to carry water,” he said. “How to put out a barrel by the rainspout, or how to pull a bucket from a well. But I have no idea how to do anything with magic, except for a little scrying.”

  “It's all in the head. Trying to grab magic, that's like trying to pick up water with your fingers.” She held up a prickly green stem between her thumb and forefinger. “You need something to carry it—a barrel, a pitcher, a cup.”

  “So, you have any spare cups lying around?” he asked.

  Lydia stood, turning her lean face toward the group of women, who were making a circuit of the property, starting from the gate.

  “You take what they're doing, for instance,” she said. “They're forming a protection spell. They need a focus. They could use anything—dirt even—to make it. But Miss Elizabeth, she's using white sand she brought up from Cape Cod. Miss Deborah, she uses flowers sometimes.”

  Proctor leaned on the hoe and watched them in the distance. He thought that he saw Deborah carrying a bag while Elizabeth dipp
ed out handfuls of it. “Why that sand in particular?”

  “Because she likes it, that's why. It helps to concentrate her prayers, when she says them.”

  “Well, what's she praying? Something like, Dear God, don't let bad things happen?”

  Lydia snorted, turned away as if she were walking to the house, then came back again. “Boy, you got more sense than that or she wouldn't let you within a mile of this place.”

  “No, really I don't know. Explain it to me.”

  “Your prayers have to be for exactly the thing you want,” she said. “Dear God, protect me from evil witches sneaking up in the middle of the night and trying to set my house on fire whiles I still in it. Like that. And you have to pray it without ceasing, just like the Good Book teaches.”

  “And that works?”

  Lydia shrugged one shoulder, bent back down to work. “If you got the power, and the chance to use it, yeah, it works. If you don't got the power, it's like sails with no wind. If you don't have faith, then it's only sand and words.”

  “So to do a protection spell, I just sprinkle sand—”

  “Or dirt, or salt, or sheep shit.”

  He laughed aloud at the last one. “So I sprinkle what ever it is, something I believe in, and I pray. And then the spell lasts for as long as I'm praying.”

  “Oh, some of them last a good deal longer,” Lydia said. “If what you used for a focus lasts, the spell can last too.”

  “So when I scrye, I use an egg.”

  “Works best if you use the same things every time, or similar things for similar spells. The more complicated the spell is, the more items you add, each one to reinforce your focus.”

  “Will you teach me how to do spells like that?”

  “No, sir,” she said. “If Miss Cecily discovers I been talking to you, even about this much, I'm in for a world of unpleasantness. So I please to ask you not to say nothing to her.”

  “Why not?”

  She stood up and took the hoe from his hands and hacked at the soil, showing him how to do it right. Then she passed it back to him and bent to pull up the weeds. “Tell me something. Did you help the widow escape?”